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I changed motors last night, took out the Pletti 220-30-A3S-P4 and installed the Mega 22-30-3 from my El Bandito. I also used the 26 cell zapped CP-1700 pack from the El. Power is up from 8-900 watts on the Pletti and 16 cells to 1100-1300 on the Mega. My ESC is set to medium timing and frequency and it pulls about 45 amps hot off the charge fading to 42 ish. I've ordered 30 of the HR-FAUP 1950's which are lighter than the 1700's. Actually, 30 of those will be about the same weight as 26 1700's. I'll dial the timing back to the least advanced which should keep the current around 40 and give even a bit more power than right now.

I checked the balance and it was a bit more noseheavy than the last time I flew it. The 26 cell pack is long - 12 over 14 cells and it hit the rear bulkhead before it could be balanced correctly. I'll fix that when I build the new 30 cell pack. I had been moving the balance back a bit at a time and last weekend got it in the right spot so I know where it needs to be. Last weekend I also rewired the elevator servo's and activated flapperon mixing. Now I have all 4 surfaces acting as elevator and only the outboards as aileron. This works great at the higher weights - it's right at 7 pounds now.

Took it out this morning for a quick flight on the new setup. The wind was blowing in the wrong direction at about 5 mph. I figured with an extra 400 peak watts it would be OK and it was. Once up I cleaned up the gear and made a circuit. Speed building all the time, it's a bullet now. Maybe not as fast as the El Bandito but it has't been dived steeply yet so who knows. I didn't want to do a complete loop since the balance is not right with the long pack but I pulled it up to vertical for a while and the power is there, I pushed it over level after 150 feet or so. This is going to be a lot of fun with this much power. It also flies decent if you leave the gear off and bungee launch with as little as 600 watts.

This is the first time I've put more than 1000 watts in to a Midi fan in flight - I am impressed with the performance at a reasonable price - the Mega is a pretty cheap motor too. Maybe I got lucky or did a good balancing job but this Midi fan runs perfectly smoothly at 31-32K RPM.

I have a Banshee waiting to be built. I ordered a 620 fan with it. I am considering the Mega 22-30-3 for the 620 fan. Do you believe this will be a good performing combo?

Rob

Sure, go for the FAUP 1950's. The 620 is just a few mm's smaller in diameter, it basically performs the same as a Midi. An amp or two less draw on the same cell count, a touch less thrust and a little more efflux speed.

Today was the first flight where the dirt parking lot I use to launch from was dry. Pretty impressive plume of dust when I throttled up

I live a couple miles from the gate at NAS Pax River. They have a little museum there with a lot full of ex test planes. They are all a little differentand besides, this isn't a scale plane so I took features from different test planes and made a scheme up...

Test Planes

I like the test plane schemes, that and the coast guard style paint scheme. You know it's not real but with the cokors you want to believe it is!LOL And I like the specs on that Mega setup. Those are still pretty low amps for the power your pulling. And I'm really curious to see how the FAUP's work out. I've really been contemplating getting a set of them lately. I want to see how they work on that setup. I have that same setup running on CP's right now and I need to add more cells to it for the proper power, but the airframe won't take the weight. I figure the FAUP's might get me what I need.

The 1950's haven't arrived yet so I modified the 26 cell CP-1700 pack so the top 1/2 overhangs the bottom towards the rear by 2 cells and put a couple more flights on it today. The balance is just about perfect now and flight times are running at 3:30 after an RODirt takeoff run of about 120 feet. There was a little breeze which caused the plane to dance about the yaw axis a bit which is interesting.

I finally got my HR-FAUP 1950's assembled, cycled and flown today. I wound up using only 25, I swore my Schulze 55bo had timing adjustment but it doesn't. 25 zapped FAUP's with the MEga 22-30-3 and 55bo pull a touch over 40 amps initially and 38-40 for most of the flight. Input watts are 1000-1100.

I like this setup a lot. Flight time was 3 minutes 20 seconds with 25 seconds left in the pack and probably another 20 seconds in flight - I shut the throttle off on the long final and my timer doesn't count when the throttle is off. Great power and the CG is in the right spot now, I pulled it up in to a looong vertical climb then rolled it 180 and pulled it over the top in a 1/2 loop. Speed at the bottom was significant . I did throttle back some of course and it handles 1/2 throttle passes fine. I'll have to work on some high alpha stuff next....

Originally posted by Chris True I swore my Schulze 55bo had timing adjustment but it doesn't.

Hi Chris

Sounds like you're having fun. We're having a burst of what Gordon (Plane Crazy) calls "British weather", but at least it's OK for building (and my wife gets her garden watered with no effort AND her water butts filled up!).

Ref your 55bo, what software version have you got? V15 and above do have 2 timing settings (hard & soft) and 2 frequencies (9.6 & 19kHz), according to the English language instructions I downloaded from the Schulze website when I got mine. I can email you the .pdf file if you need it.

awesome

I need to get some of these cells. I saw the charts on the zapped cells and they looked really good. Where they close to the rated specs under load? And 40 amps is real friendly for that much power. Did you get a chance to see how they act over 40 amps?

At 30 second intervals starting some way in to the discharge (maybe 20 seconds?) the amps and volts per cell are:

40.8 - 1.08
40.5 - 1.05
40.2 - 1.032
39.4 - 1.008
37.6 - .972

1920 mah out according to the watt meter. Although, the last 30-50 mah was at rapidly decreasing voltage.

I suppose they would be OK to somewhat higher amp draws but personally I wouldn't go much higher unless it was in an application where the full throttle excursions were fairly brief. They do get quite hot as is.

Sounds like you're having fun. We're having a burst of what Gordon (Plane Crazy) calls "British weather", but at least it's OK for building (and my wife gets her garden watered with no effort AND her water butts filled up!).

Ref your 55bo, what software version have you got? V15 and above do have 2 timing settings (hard & soft) and 2 frequencies (9.6 & 19kHz), according to the English language instructions I downloaded from the Schulze website when I got mine. I can email you the .pdf file if you need it.

Gordon

"water butts" - is this a British term?

My 55bo is version 14a of course - one version short! I think I bought it a month or two before the hpa and then shpa software came out. I do have a 58bo which is limited to 17 cells, it has the shpa software. That must have been what I remebered, I have changed modes on that one.

I must say, my 55bo gets quite warm on 25 and 26 cells. It's never let me down but it is a little toasty at the end of a flight.